I had promised myself that I would refrain from mentioning anything to do with Christmas before December 1st, but that was all before I was invited to take part in the John Lewis Secret Santa challenge. All good intentions have since gone out the window and I'm ready to embrace the Christmas spirit with both the bear and the hare (see the new John Lewis Christmas advert here).

I was sat at my desk at work last week when an email popped into my inbox entitled ‘Marks & Spencer Valentine’s Challenge’, instantly intrigued I opened it up to see what it involved. M&S had decided to challenge 10 bloggers to a ‘Secret Santa’ style project to celebrate Valentine’s Day. As they put it “with Valentine’s Day taking place next week we want to encourage all the girls out there to embrace the day, whether single or in a relationship. After all, the day is about feeling special, right?”. I completely agree and regardless of the fact that I could be celebrating with my husband I’ll actually be spending Thursday evening with my entire family in London, something I’m very much looking forward to!

I was originally going to title this post ‘A Money Supermarket Christmas’, but worried that it would be misinterpreted to suggest that I opted to buy people car insurance as gifts this year. This post is actually the second in my #MSMSecretSanta series and I finally get to share with you the lovely gifts I received from 'The Girl About Town', aka Sarah.

As one challenge ends, another begins... today I'm excited to reveal the details of my Moneysupermarket.com Secret Santa Challenge and who I've been partnered with!

For those of you who haven’t seen various discussions with the tag #MSMSecretSanta whizzing by on Twitter I’ll give you a quick bit of background information. Back in November I was contacted by the rather lovely Ben from Moneysupermarket.com to ask whether I’d like to get involved with their Secret Santa campaign. The challenge was simple; they would give each participating blogger £25 to buy a Secret Santa present for a fellow blogger. The pairings would be entirely random, organised by MoneySupermarket.com to help introduce you to new bloggers and challenge you to buy a gift for someone you've never met.

Continuing on from my Valentine’s Gift Guide for Her, here are my selections for the ultimate Valentine’s Gifts for Him. Not what you’d necessarily call romantic, but hey, when did boys desire romance anyway?! It’s my belief that men in general would be far happier with a non-romantic yet practical gift, such as an iPad, whisky or Senna on DVD. Which, by the way, I’ve watched and very much enjoyed. So don’t worry about choosing it as a possible gift for fear of being made to watch it, you don’t have to be an F1 fan to appreciate it.

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